Syrian priest suffered regime torture, friend says

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Lebanese clergyman declared that a Syrian priest had been arrested by the notorious military division, the Palestine Branch, in Damascus some years ago, being accused of dealing with Israel. An accusation for which he was arrested and spent more than one year and two months in the prisons of the regime.

The former dissident leader from Hezbollah militia, Hassan Saeed Mshimesh, told Zaman al-Wasl that the priest, who refused to disclose his name for personal reasons, was a friend of him in social media networks since three years in Lebanon. When he became a refugee in France, he met him there and told him–as he said- about his tragedy and sorrows from behind an individual cell in which he was jailed by the regime’s intelligence in the Palestine Section in Damascus during two years.

The priest and former detainee underwent all kind of savage torture and humiliation and verbal offences – as he said- and spent two years alone in the same cell.

Sheikh Mshimesh said that several attempts were made from religious parties from Lebanon and Syria in order to know about his situation and the place of his detention and to free him, but they failed since the regime was intransigent and refused to free him and refused to listen to any legal entity when he wanted to unleash his wrath on someone.

The source said that his friend, the priest, did not allow him to disclose his name in order to ensure the security of his relatives and family including his father, his mother and some of his brothers living in Damascus under the authority of the dictator Bashar Al-Assad and his ruthless and inhuman henchmen.

The regime of Bashar Al-Assad released 21 among them on March 5th, 1998 and retained 25 others who were accused of spying for Israel, without mentioning their names or the time and place of releasing them. Among them there were two priests: the Anthonian Father Albert Sherfan and Father Soliman Abi Khalil who disappeared following the attack on the St. John Monastery Alcalaa – Beit Meri - in Mount Lebanon, on October 14th, 1990.

Their names appeared among the detainees in the Syrian prisons. It was said that they were jailed in a special section in the military prison of Palmyra before it was destroyed by ISIS years ago.